"Very well.—You mean it, I suppose.—Of course you do.—You are quite right. It isn't the correct thing, this trade, as a matter of course. Still, knowing that it was allowed, and not knowing how you might feel about it, I thought I would offer you the chance. It pays like piracy. I have known a single smuggle to net forty thousand dollars, after paying hush money and every thing."
"Shocking!" said the Doctor. "But you mustn't think that I am not obliged to you. I really am grateful for your interest in my well-being. Only I can't accept. Some men have virtue strong enough to survive such things; but I fear that my character is of too low and feeble a standard."
"You are not offended, I hope," observed the Colonel after a thoughtful pause, during which he debated whether he should offer the Doctor the mayoralty, and decided in the negative.
"Not at all. I beg you to believe, not at all. But how is it possible that such transactions are not checked!" he exclaimed, recurring to his amazement. "The government ought to be informed of them."
"Who is to inform? Not the barterers nor their abettors, I suppose. You don't expect that of these business fellows. You think perhaps that I ought to expose the thing. But in the army we obey orders without criticising our superiors publicly. Suppose I should inform, and find myself unable to prove any thing, and be dismissed the service."
The Doctor hung his head in virtuous discouragement, admitting to himself that this world is indeed an unsatisfactory planet.
"You may rely upon my secrecy concerning all this, Colonel," he said.
"I do so; at least so far as regards your authority. As for the trade itself, I don't care how soon it is blown upon."
If the Colonel had been a quoter of poetry, which he was not, he would probably have repeated as he walked homeward "An honest man's the noblest work of God." What he did say to himself was, "By Jove! I must get the Doctor a good thing of some sort."
Ten days later he called at the house with a second proposition which astonished Ravenel almost as much as the first.